


Growing

by yeaka



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Merpeople
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22469602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeaka/pseuds/yeaka
Summary: Elijah’s mermaid’s lacking.
Relationships: Elijah Kamski/RT600 "Chloe" Android(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Growing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deadlymilkovich](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlymilkovich/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don’t own Detroit: Become Human or any of its contents, and I’m not making any money off this.

She smiles, but that smile swiftly fades. He settles into his seat across from the pool, tablet open in his lap, the myriad of calculations on its surface nowhere near as complex as the circuits in her brain. Chloe’s an incredibly complicated creature, more advanced than any other model he’s created just for the scales in her tail and the adaptation of her skin to water, but her big blue eyes have the same empty innocence of all her predecessors. Her world is a simple one, narrowed down to the contents of his blood-red swimming pool. She drifts smoothly back and forth as he works. 

Occasionally, she rises, surfacing with a grand flourish, flipping her blond hair back and tossing little droplets everywhere. She’ll catch his eye for half a moment, and her expression will flare with life. She’ll hunch her shoulder coyly and turn away from him, her fingers running up to comb her hair back down, her gaze always centered around him. It fans something in his chest that it shouldn’t. Pride, maybe. Conceit. But then he realizes, one day out of the blue, that it’s not necessarily that she likes looking at him. 

It’s that there’s nothing else _to_ look at.

The view beyond him slowly changes, altering with each season and the weather, but the scenery itself remains the same. The rest of the room does. Elijah rarely has time to redecorate. 

Elijah sips the whisky another Chloe brings him—one with two legs—and he runs through new specifications for both business and pleasure. He might not _officially_ work for CyberLife any longer, but he’ll never truly give androids up. They’re his life’s work. His greatest work. Chloe is a pretty trophy.

Chloe often looks sad, drifting pointlessly about above the rim of his tablet. For all his detachment, Elijah’s not _completely_ immune to seeing a pretty girl sad. 

But he reminds himself that it’s not _real_ —that she’s only feigning emotions. An emotional response in return would be useless and naïve. Elijah’s anything but. 

He returns to his work, heedless of her splashing.

* * *

The other Chloes swim less in the winter. There’s no logical reason for it—they can’t feel the frigid temperature, and their schedules haven’t changed. He thinks perhaps they’re subconsciously mimicking him, always altering subroutines for what they think he’ll like best. But he keeps his indoor pool plenty warm and swims whenever he can. In the lounge, watching them hover by his wall-to-wall bookshelf of volumes they’ve all memorized, he tells them, “You should make use of the pool.”

The first one turns to him. Her LED flickers as she processes. She blinks and tells him, “Yes, Elijah.”

The second asks, “Should we do anything there?”

He thinks a moment, both about the question and why he’s suggesting it at all. There really is nothing for them _to_ do there. And there’s no reason to herd them about. He finishes, “No,” and closes the novel in his lap.

He leaves it on the desk. Another Chloe will fetch it. He strolls through the automated doors, out to the poolroom, the two Chloes on his heels. His mermaid looks up at his entrance, perking for that split second as she always does whenever something _new_ happens. Her golden tail flickers beneath the surface, wagging subtly back and forth like an enchanted puppy. The two Chloes slip smoothly out of their dresses all in one go and drop down into the water. His mermaid smiles for it. She turns to look at them, wading instantly over, blue light spinning away as they strike up a conversation. She seems marginally appeased.

She doesn’t light up the way she does when _Elijah_ swims with her. There should be no difference to her. But of course, he _is_ her creator, her owner, her life. The only man she has any significant contact with. And maybe she appreciates the brilliance of her sculptor.

Maybe he’s projecting. Maybe Carl was right and he does like to have his ego stroked a little too much. He enjoys the enormous portrait hanging in the lobby anyway. 

It doesn’t matter. The things in his pool are only machines: toys he built to amuse himself with. Her smile amuses him. 

She’s frowning when he returns in the evening and the other two have gone. He sits at the edge while he takes his dinner, pants rolled up past his knees and legs casually kicking the water. He berates himself while he does it for petty emotionalism, but he does it anyway. Chloe rests beside him and watches him eat, simulating pleasure.

* * *

“What do you think of the pool?”

Chloe, _the_ Chloe, his first one and the spokeswoman for all of them, hovers by his desk. Her little blue dress is no different than it is on every other day, but he finds his eyes lingering along its seams nonetheless—perhaps he should give his mermaid clothes. The other Chloes tend to wear bikinis when they swim. But he’s grown so used to her raw body, glorious in its nakedness: a masterpiece painted entirely by his own two hands. He’s no seamstress. The clothes are all shipped in. Chloe seems perfectly content with her one blue dress and never asks for anything more. 

He expects her to have nothing to say about the pool either, because Chloe is never anything but content. She feigns other things for the sake of guests, but there’s no need with him. Yet she answers, “It’s sort of small, isn’t it?”

Elijah looks over at her. He repeats, “Small?”

She nods. “You’re a great man, Elijah: a visionary who can see the use of recreational facilities alongside your work. But... for a mermaid...” She trails off, perfectly capable of innuendos. The Turing test was no match for her. She doesn’t usually employ such techniques with him. 

She’s cleverer than he often gives her credit for. She’s right. His pool is eye-candy and nothing more. He’s become somewhat a minimalist in recent years, but he hasn’t built the Chloes with the same aesthetic appreciation. He tells, “Thank you.”

“Of course. Will that be all?”

“Compile a list of the city’s top contractors and architects and put in a call to Carl; I need some designs.”

* * *

He owns as much land as he wants. There’s more then enough to clear away the field behind his office, where floor-to-ceiling windows currently look out across the snow. He has that glass reinforced and a stairwell mounted in the corner, leading two a bubble cut out of the roof—he’ll want to be able to get in and out of his new creation without having to go outside. Human project leaders keep him abreast of all changes that need to be made to the ever-evolving plan, but androids handle the exact specifications. Android don’t make mistakes, and Elijah doesn’t tolerate them. 

Elijah spends almost everything he made on his last city contract, but he has a new model to sell CyberLife, and the proceeds of that initial requisition will more than make up for his spending. The ensuing royalties will keep him set for life. He hemorrhages money, but he also farms it en masse. He calls in a marine biologist for the best flora and fauna to line the floor of his new compartment. She suggests fish he’s never even heard of, plenty he’s already made android versions of, and he orders a steady mix of organic creatures and parts to make artificial ones. During breakfast, a Chloe mentions that she feels like a princess in his castle, and it makes him think to order a hollow structure that looks like a proper castle—just something to fill the space. Then he orders several more, because he has the size of a small gymnasium to litter with new ideas, and Elijah _always_ has new ideas. He just normally puts them into outgoing projects, rather than add-ons for what he already has. 

He doesn’t tell the Chloe in his pool. The others are sworn to silence, and they don’t ask why, just obey. He can’t justify that in his own head. He tells himself he’s building a giant aquarium off his office for his own entertainment. It’ll be beautiful when it’s finished.

There’s beauty in Chloe’s face. He swims with her in the existing poolroom and stays until he’s pruned.

* * *

He fetches her himself. It would be so easy to have the others do it or to fetch a wheelchair like the one he built for Carl. But he has her climb out of the water and bends to pick her up, scooping her into his arms, cradling her against his chest. She soaks through his sweater, but that’s alright—another Chloe will wash it, and a third will clean up the puddles they trail through the house. Elijah carries her out the door. 

She looks around. She saw it all when he first brought her out, and it’s surely memorized: ingrained in her circuits. The bulk of her attention remains on him. Her delicate arms stay looped around his neck, and she asks him curiously, “Where are you taking me, Elijah?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Chloe tilts her head. She probably doesn’t understand the merit of surprises. He’s being foolish. He’s accepted that. He takes her there anyway. 

He brings her right into his office, and her gaze instantly catches on the enormous tank that makes up the whole far wall. It stretches far into the distance, obscured by the sculptures inside and the drifting seaweed, the brightly coloured corral and the busy schools of fish. Chloe’s pink lips part. She has no breath to catch, but her shock is still poignant. She whispers, reverent, “ _Elijah_...” 

He’s always loved the way Chloes say his name. It’s why he deactivated all their formal subroutines. He takes her straight across the room, climbing the stairs mounted to the left wall—simple planks of polished wood that go with the artistic design. There’s a shelf at the top where he can sit as he unloads her. Chloe slips right out of his arms, diving down into the water. Some of it sloshes over, but the carpet below has been modified for that. Her iridescent tail looks right at home amidst the rainbow of underwater life. 

For a long moment, Chloe’s frozen there, head swiveling at exact intervals as she takes it all in. Then she takes off, rapidly swimming to the castle, weaving in and out of its many openings before spotting an artificial eel and running her fingers eagerly along it. She recognizes the organic fish and doesn’t touch them but _stares_ at them, face full of awe. In that moment, her expression is everything. 

Elijah patiently waits. He experiences satisfaction through her delight, soaking in the second-hand amazement, and it’s worth more than any other accolades he’s ever received. His plethora of rewards is nothing to the glow in Chloe’s eyes. For a long while, he forgets that he’s a scientist and businessman with never ending work, and he just stays there, _enjoying_ her. 

Then the phone beeps on his desk. Elijah stirs, just about to head back down. But Chloe rush over.

She lunges out of the tank, splashing water all over his chest, but he has no time to pull back—suddenly, she’s _on_ him, hugging him so tightly that Elijah’s the one to lose breath. 

Her soft face digs into the crux of his shoulder. Her hands splay along his back. Her body flattens into him, tail tight against the glass beneath the surface. Chloe has no temperature, and yet it’s the warmest embrace Elijah’s ever felt. 

She murmurs, so painfully heartfelt, _“Thank you.”_

Elijah answers, “Of course,” because he realizes now that he had no other choice. He’s created life, and it’s time to make it _happy._


End file.
